Obviously we're a community from all over the world, and as such we don't all watch the races that we love when they're on live. I've noticed over the years that many posters have helpful links to highlight packages and even full-race replays not too long after the races themselves happen, which is always great and often includes stuff not on steephill or cyclingfans; but if I haven't seen the race yet, I usually don't have any way of knowing how to access that without going into the race thread, which is obviously spoiled since its purpose is to, well, talk about the race. That's a bummer, since for me the joy of cycling is in the tension of what might happen, and I'm not always gonna be there for it live. So I figured if other people have had this experience, this thread might be useful.

My idea is to create a thread that does the following:

1) Provide a thread that lists general resources that relatively new race fans might not know (see details below);

2) Post links to highlights/replays etc of races that have just happened, so people who haven't caught the race live can be easily linked to that, and have a gloriously unspoiled space on these boards to seek out that information;

3) Provide a thread where people who haven't yet seen the race can inquire about those things. Beyond where to find them, let's say I didn't see last week's Volta a Catalunya live, and on Tuesday I posted here and asked 'is it worth downloading the whole race or should I watch the last 4km on steephill'? People would tell me to watch the last 4km and I'd save a few hours. Or on Wednesday I could find out there was no live coverage due to weather without waiting and waiting for highlights/downloads before cluing in. Or if you've seen the race, you can pop in and say 'whoever's reading this - you HAVE to see today's stage to L'Aquila/Fuente De/Saint-Amand-Montrond'. Stuff like that.

For points 2) and 3), I hope this thread can be a place of information sharing. For point 1), here's some starter information for relatively new cycling fans:

Live Streams, Highlights, etc

steephill.tv is a fantastic source for live streams (they helpfully tell you which ones are geo-restricted and globally accessible, which ones have malware, etc), spoiler-free highlights (they have a non-spoiler mode for several hours usually) and other information, like startlists, parcours, etc.

cyclingfans.com is a similar source for live streams and highlights/videos, although all its videos (I think) are non-spoiler if you click the 'videos' link on the race page and not the 'results' page.

Subscription Services

cycling.tv is an english-language subscription website that offers live, on-demand, and highlight coverage of many races throughout the year. I was a subscriber for a few years, and found it to be both great and frustrating. It's great because having on-demand access, often quickly after a race, is very useful. It's frustrating because they are the worst customer-service business I've ever seen. Like, ever. Beyond that, their race schedule changes from year to year, and they often don't know at season's start which races they have rights to. However, to a new cycling fan that wants to do nothing but binge on races, their back catalogue - assuming they still have it, it's been a couple of years - is quite impressive and probably worth a temporary subscription alone.

Anyway, I trust that I'm not the only one who will find this thread useful, as I've thought of it many times in the past but am finally deciding to do something about it. Please let me know if there are other resources that should be included in the links above as well. Enjoy watching, everyone.

Great idea! The only thing I would add onto here is http://www.fromsport.com or whatever they call it these days (fromsport works, they just redirect you). Its a place to get streams of cycling and other sports. With it I can stream Eurosport coverage of races and not have to listen to Phil and Paul be idiots.

skidmark wrote:Hey guys,

Obviously we're a community from all over the world, and as such we don't all watch the races that we love when they're on live. I've noticed over the years that many posters have helpful links to highlight packages and even full-race replays not too long after the races themselves happen, which is always great and often includes stuff not on steephill or cyclingfans; but if I haven't seen the race yet, I usually don't have any way of knowing how to access that without going into the race thread, which is obviously spoiled since its purpose is to, well, talk about the race. That's a bummer, since for me the joy of cycling is in the tension of what might happen, and I'm not always gonna be there for it live. So I figured if other people have had this experience, this thread might be useful.

My idea is to create a thread that does the following:

1) Provide a thread that lists general resources that relatively new race fans might not know (see details below);

2) Post links to highlights/replays etc of races that have just happened, so people who haven't caught the race live can be easily linked to that, and have a gloriously unspoiled space on these boards to seek out that information;

3) Provide a thread where people who haven't yet seen the race can inquire about those things. Beyond where to find them, let's say I didn't see last week's Volta a Catalunya live, and on Tuesday I posted here and asked 'is it worth downloading the whole race or should I watch the last 4km on steephill'? People would tell me to watch the last 4km and I'd save a few hours. Or on Wednesday I could find out there was no live coverage due to weather without waiting and waiting for highlights/downloads before cluing in. Or if you've seen the race, you can pop in and say 'whoever's reading this - you HAVE to see today's stage to L'Aquila/Fuente De/Saint-Amand-Montrond'. Stuff like that.

For points 2) and 3), I hope this thread can be a place of information sharing. For point 1), here's some starter information for relatively new cycling fans:

Live Streams, Highlights, etc

steephill.tv is a fantastic source for live streams (they helpfully tell you which ones are geo-restricted and globally accessible, which ones have malware, etc), spoiler-free highlights (they have a non-spoiler mode for several hours usually) and other information, like startlists, parcours, etc.

cyclingfans.com is a similar source for live streams and highlights/videos, although all its videos (I think) are non-spoiler if you click the 'videos' link on the race page and not the 'results' page.

Subscription Services

cycling.tv is an english-language subscription website that offers live, on-demand, and highlight coverage of many races throughout the year. I was a subscriber for a few years, and found it to be both great and frustrating. It's great because having on-demand access, often quickly after a race, is very useful. It's frustrating because they are the worst customer-service business I've ever seen. Like, ever. Beyond that, their race schedule changes from year to year, and they often don't know at season's start which races they have rights to. However, to a new cycling fan that wants to do nothing but binge on races, their back catalogue - assuming they still have it, it's been a couple of years - is quite impressive and probably worth a temporary subscription alone.

Anyway, I trust that I'm not the only one who will find this thread useful, as I've thought of it many times in the past but am finally deciding to do something about it. Please let me know if there are other resources that should be included in the links above as well. Enjoy watching, everyone.

Moser fanboy.

Libertine Seguros wrote:Colombia is a world of totally alien wonder, a bit like putting the Amish in the control room at NASA.

Nibali becomes only the 6th winner of all 3 GTS (2014)! Nibali joins Gimondi, Merckx and Hinault as only the 4th man to win all 3 GTS and 2 different Monuments (2018). A throwback rider in this age of specialization. Bravo!

Alright, not a ton of action on this thread, but I'm going to try to use it for the first time here: I watched the whole last 120km of Paris-Roubaix live, only to have all the streams freeze up with about 18km to go. I gave up and turned off after 10 futile minutes rather than missing the crucial cobbles sectors and finding out what happened after. Anyone have a link to some video of the last 15-20km? I see steephill has the last 10km but I wanna see the Carrefour for sure, and I don't wanna wait for a full download. Help appreciated!

Matdum94 wrote:To help new cycling fans, I think there should be a list of top sprinters, classics riders, sprinters etc.

Hey, that would probably be helpful, but I'm imagining that would be a different thread; this is just for watching races. As a start, it may be a good idea to go through cqranking.com or procyclingstats.com - they have their own rankings of the 'best' riders, and I believe the latter breaks down points into the categories you suggest above.

Thanks afrank for making this a sticky! I really hope it's useful for people (the fact that there was a thread created today on this subject makes me hopeful that it is).